Shmoop's award-winning learning guides are now available on your favorite eBook reader through the Barnes & Noble eBook Store. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the covers. Enjoy immersing yourself into this family’s story.Take your understanding of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath to a whole new level, anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. This novel is rich in plot with all the elements of family drama, murder, romance, and secrets within the world of organized crime. The women have their disagreements and resentments between them, but the good of the family always rules.Īubray shines in her ability to bring each woman alive with distinct personalities, and to weave individual stories and different plots into one cohesive story. They must be clever and savvy in navigating the world of organized crime while keeping their families safe and the businesses successful. The Godmothers are now in charge of the family and its businesses. Before long, Frankie is on the run, Mario goes to war, and Johnny is ill in a tuberculosis sanatorium. When Gianni and Tessa die, the businesses go to the sons. The family must pay tributes to boss Frank Costello and the police to protect their operations. They invest in properties and collect the rents loans are made to people banks won’t touch they cover bookies who can’t meet their payouts and gambling thrives in their bar’s back room. The patriarch, Gianni, and the matriarch, Tessa, run the family businesses. Aubray begins with a page-turning, captivating back story of each woman, and reveals a secret from each of their pasts that the reader knows will inevitably come to light, as secrets do, and upend their lives.

Each woman is the godmother to another’s child, and they end up running the family’s businesses in a gangster-run New York City, thus earning the title of Godmothers. The story, which takes place between 19, is framed by one of the godmothers narrating their story from later in life. The Godmothers are four women in an Italian immigrant family living in Greenwich Village – Lucy, Amie, and Filomena have each married a son, and Petrina is the daughter.

The bell jar barnes and noble